Keyword Planner– Google’s keyword planner tool is a must-have in my keyword research toolbox. I use this tool primarily to discover search terms that are generating enough search volumes on Google to be worth targeting. I also use this tool to get more synonyms and variations of the niche keywords I am researching.

SEMRush– SEMRush offers a lot of free features every SEO should appreciate. I use SEMRush to analyze the competitive landscape on search terms I am looking to target in my SEO strategy. I also use SEMRush to track keyword ranking performance of my clients’ websites and those of their competitors.

Open Site Explorer– Use Open Site Explorer to identify link building opportunities. Research backlinks, identify top pages, view social activity, and analyze anchor text.

There are a whole bunch of SEO tools out there. Some good. Many not so good.

There are also many that are good for a given situation so it is tough to suggest a top three but the following are three tools I use on an almost daily basis:

Übersuggest — am a big fan of Übersuggest for keyword research. It just saves us so much time and tends to provide a lot more data than doing this manually or using the severely limited Google Keyword Planner. I am also growing ever more fond of Answer the Public for more keyword and topic ideas for content marketing.

Screaming Frog– I just love screaming frog. It is a search geeks wet dream. Screaming Frog gives us a search engines view on how the site is hung together. Using the data here with data from other tools like Search Console and Google itself we can get to the bottom of the most technical issues.

Google Search Console– another great tool is Google’s own diagnostic platform Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools). This enforces a structured look at crawling, indexation and optimization issues which is always a good thing.

In many cases it is the intersection of multiple tools where the real value lies and as an example we have been recently looking into a fairly technical SEO issue with AJAX rendering and crawling issues for a new client. The content is spread between two sites and is created with the Angular framework. There was a number of issues here yet we identified and resolved the issues with Screaming Frog and Search Console alone.

Monitor Backlinks– This tool will email you a daily summary of changes to your backlink profile — backlinks you’ve gained, backlinks you’ve lost, and backlinks that might have changed in status, such as from dofollow to nofollow. It will also help you keep an eye on your competitors so you can stay on top of new link opportunities and help you monitor your keyword rankings.

Rival IQ– This is a comprehensive competitor research tool. In terms of SEO, you can enter all of your competitor’s domains and it will go out and find their domain authority, number of backlinks, organic search traffic, SEO titles, meta descriptions, and much more. If you have to do SEO audits, it’s a dream come true.

Impactana– This is a tool that is perfect for those who are creating content with SEO in mind. It’s similar to BuzzSumo in the fact that it will let you find the most popular content based on social popularity. But it goes beyond that and also shows you the most popular content in terms of number of links that it gained. So when you’re in doubt about whether a certain type of content will generate backlinks, you can use this tool to find out.

Buzzstream– this is a rock solid outreach tool, and it works great as a CRM too. I wanted to find a CRM that was a good fit for a marketer rather than a sales person, oddly enough Buzzstream worked better than other CRM’s I tested. Also, our team at UK Linkologyuse it and find it helps keep everyone organized and in sync (e.g. no emailing the same contact twice).

SEMrush– right now, this is my top-level SEO dashboard. I use it mostly for rank tracking, site auditing, and competitor research.

Ahrefs– there’s a lot of cross over between Ahrefs and SEMrush now. I used to only use it for backlink checking but it’s keyword research/competitor research functionality is amazing now.

I’m using well over 10 different tools in my day-to-day work, so it’snot easy to name just three tools I wouldn’t able to live without in2016.

The first tool is a no-brainer: Google Search Console; I guess most SEOs are aware of the awesomeness that is Google Search Console data. So much valuable data to harvest — logging into GSC once a week (or at least once a month) is an absolute must for every savvy SEO.

My 2nd tool tip is a shameless self-plug — of course, I have to mention our own software solution here : OnPage.org; With over 150.000 users worldwide, OnPage.org has swiftly become the leading technical SEO software. Auditing websites has never been easier. The TF*IDF analysis tool for content optimization is also an innovative approach for finding keyword inspiration and writing better content.

A 3rd tool I cannot live without is Searchmetrics; Searchmetrics just offers the best data for competitive-, keyword- and social impact research. I’ve been an avid Searchmetrics user ever since its launch almost 11 years ago. The quality of Search metrics research data is just unparalleled.

Screaming Frog SEO crawler — This is a must have tool for those who are involved with the SEO. The tool is basically a crawler that tries to find every page and asset on your site and extracts relevant data about it.

Majestic — The previous tools I have mentioned is all about on-page SEO. When it comes to off-page-optimization (i.e. links) you need a different tool. For link analysis I generally use Majestic and it’s a very effective tool.

SEMrush — SEMrush is a competitor analysis tools. With this tools you can get a very good snapshot of a site’s performance in search results, and compare that to those of its rivals.

My recommendations are probably a bit different than most. I’ve had a lot of experience with both organic SEO and local SEO. People that don’t know the ins and outs probably think they are the same, but they can be very different. After working with countless clients when I ran an agency, I’ve been very familiar with local SEO.

Here are my recommendations:

SERPwoo– This isn’t going to help you get rankings at all. It’s not going to uncover hidden, profitable keywords, but it will help you understand the movement of the search results. As long as you properly analyze the results, you can tell what is working for who, and you can also pick up on any algorithm changes by keeping a close look on the SERPwoo results. The data revealed inside SERPwoo, is pretty intense and can be overwhelming for beginners. Don’t be scared though, it’s an amazing tool.

Long Tail Pro– This is a more popular, and common tool used by most people doing SEO. It’s a great tool that allows you to look for keyword data like search traffic, domain and page authority of your competitors, it also allows you to judge the competition before you decide on going for a specific keyword.

AnswerThePublic– This is my favorite tool, and best of all, it’s free! It’s kind of like a keyword research tool, but it helps you generate content ideas based on a seed keyword. Using this tool you can build topic relevance across a domain which can be a necessity in SEO. I use this both for local and organic SEO.